Alternate pulses of ultrasound and electricity enhanced electrochemical process for p-nitrophenol degradation

Abstract

A novel alternated ultrasonic and electric pulse enhanced electrochemical process was developed and used for investigating its effectiveness on the degradation of p-nitrophenol (PNP) in an aqueous solution. The impacts of pulse mode, pH, cell voltage, supporting electrolyte concentration, ultrasonic power and the initial concentration of PNP on the performance of PNP degradation were evaluated. Possible pathway of PNP degradation in this system was proposed based on the intermediates identified by GC-MS. Experimental results showed that 94.1% of PNP could be removed at 2h in the dual-pulse ultrasound enhanced electrochemical (dual-pulse US-EC) process at mild operating conditions (i.e., pulse mode of electrochemical pulse time (TEC)=50 ms and ultrasonic pulse time (T US)=100 ms, initial pH of 3.0, cell voltage of 10 V, Na2SO4 concentration of 0.05 M, ultrasonic powder of 48.8 W and initial concentration of PNP of 100mg/L), compared with 89.0%, 58.9%, 2.4% in simultaneous ultrasound enhanced electrochemical (US-EC) process, pulsed electrochemical (EC) process and pulsed ultrasound (US), respectively. Moreover, energy used in the dual-pulse US-EC process was reduced by 50.4% as compared to the US-EC process. The degradation of PNP in the pulsed EC process, US-EC process and dual-pulse process followed pseudo-first-order kinetics. Therefore, the dual-pulse US-EC process was found to be a more effective technique for the degradation of PNP and would have a promising application in wastewater treatment.